Mukesh Khanna reveals he let go of a Hollywood film offer after Mahabharat, Saeed Jaffrey got knighthood after doing it

Mukesh Khanna said that no actor today would let a Hollywood offer go away so easily.

Mumbai | Updated: January 11, 2025 11:46 AM IST

3 min read

Mukesh Khanna says Saeed Jaffrey received knighthood after doing a film that he let go. (Photos: Mukesh Khanna/ Instagram, IMDb)

Veteran actor Mukesh Khanna, who played the iconic role of Bhishma Pitamah in the popular TV series Mahabharat, has revealed that he was once offered a Hollywood film that he rejected because they were not willing to share the script with him. The film, titled Masala, was being cast by renowned actor-casting director Madhur Jaffrey. Madhur was briefly married to Saeed in the early 1960s.

“Once, a Hollywood film had come to me, it was called Krishna,” Mukesh Khanna recalled in a conversation with Hindi Rush. “We have a very famous casting director Madhur Jaffrey. She casts actors here for Hollywood films. Saeed Jaffery’s wife. I got a call saying, ‘Mukesh we are making Krishna, can you send me your profile?’ I said very good but what am I doing in the film Madhur ji? I thought it must be something to do with Mahabharat as the film was called Krishna.”

However, when Khanna asked for the script, Madhur Jaffrey seemed hesitant to share it. “She said, ‘no, no you just send me your profile.’ We were talking over the phone. I asked for the story, she got fed up, maybe… Then Saeed Jaffrey came on the call and said, ‘She is not asking for earth, she is just asking for your photo and profile.’ I am stubborn, I told Saeed bhai, ‘I am also not asking for earth I am asking for the script.'”

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Khanna’s persistence ultimately led to him losing out on the film. “So he said that he was in talks with Shashi Kapoor ji and then he would send me the script… Tell me which actor, in today’s time, would treat a Hollywood offer like this? And let it go?” Khanna asked rhetorically. As it turned out, the film never got made with Shashi Kapoor, and Saeed Jaffrey himself played the role of Krishna. “He got the title of ‘Sir’, today he is called Sir Saeed Jaffrey because of that film,” Khanna noted. In Masala, which was a Canadian film, Saeed had a triple role and actor Zohra Sehgal starred with him in the film.

After the success of Mahabharat, Mukesh was seen as Shaktimaan in the Doordarshan series.

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